BishopAccountability.org
	Woman's Suit Claims '75 Abuse by Priest By Blake Morlock Tucson Citizen September 6, 2002 A Tucson woman sued the Catholic Diocese of Tucson on Wednesday, alleging she was sexually abused by a priest at an East Side parish during the 1970s, when she was a child. In the suit, the woman says she repressed memories of the abuse until January or February of this year, when she attended Mass in Tucson and heard a priest read a letter from the Tucson Diocese bishop acknowledging molestations at Our Mother of Sorrows, the East Side parish the woman attended as a child. The suit, filed yesterday in Pima County Superior Court, is the second sex abuse case filed against the diocese this week. And it is the fifth sexual abuse suit against the diocese since it settled 11 abuse lawsuits in January for an undisclosed sum. Those suits alleged sexual abuse of 10 boys by four priests during the 1960s and 1970s in Tucson and Yuma. Two of the priests, the Revs. Pedro Luke and William Byrne, named in the lawsuit filed by the woman, under the name "Jane Roe, a married woman," were also named in previous lawsuits filed against the Tucson Diocese. Luke's whereabouts are unknown, and Byrne died in 1993. The newest suit does not specify an amount for damages sought. The plaintiff asked for $2 million in mid-June as a precursor to mediation talks with the church, said diocese spokesman Fred Allison. Mediation was unproductive, according to Lynne Cadigan, attorney for the alleged victim. She is the lawyer who successfully represented plaintiffs in the suits settled earlier this year. She said the diocese can afford a $2 million payout because it has $100 million in property holdings. The complaint says that Luke, who was an associate pastor at Our Mother of Sorrows Church, 1800 S. Kolb Road, molested the plaintiff for two months in 1975. The woman was 7 at the time. The suit accused Bishop Manuel Moreno, who came to the diocese in 1982, of "protecting pedophillic priests over parishoners and children as his predecessor, Bishop Green, had done." The plaintiff's mother told Byrne, who was pastor at Our Mother of Sorrows at the time of the alleged incidents, and he did not report the alleged molestations to police, according to the suit. The mother called police herself and Luke was arrested in the case in mid-September 1975. He was convicted of child molestation and sentenced to a year in the state mental hospital. The woman says in the suit that "Father Luke" baby-sat for families and cared for their children while the families believed he was a priest in good standing with the church. Byrne also is accused in the suit of molesting children while he was supervising Luke. Both Luke and Byrne denied to the woman, the suit states, that they committed any wrongdoing. The lawsuit claims the diocese was negligent in its supervision of these priests and accuses the priests of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Allison, responding to the filing of the suit, said, "It is very sad for any true victim of sexual abuse."He said the church offered the woman church counseling and an apology. Parishioners oppose large cash settlements, he said. "And it's their church."
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